I finally finished Gears of War last night for the first time. It’s taken me a few months, as I haven’t had a lot of time lately, but it’s been a lot of fun. It’s one of the best games I’ve played in a long time. I only finished it on the Casual setting, but once I finished watching the credits, I started over again into the Hardcore setting.

Of course, I did have some help along the way - I love the co-op multiplayer mode - and Jesse was a big help one night, helping me plow through a few stages and helping me find more COG tags in one night than I’d found total so far.

There were a couple of things that bothered me about how the game ended though. As I was on the train, there was nothing that really made me feel as if I was nearing the end. Once I got to the final fight with Raam, it was a total surprise. Usually there is some kind of buildup to let you know that something good is coming.

Also, it wasn’t exactly the most difficult boss fight - sure, I died a few times - but it seemed like all it took was a few Torque Bow shots to his face, and then once I made it to the turret gun in the center of the car, it was over in about 12 seconds. The whole thing just seemed a little anti-climatic. The rest of the game was so good, that I think I was expecting a little more from the final fight.

Also, Dom is an idiot.

He seemed to fight pretty good for an AI character, but once we reached Raam, he kept charging right up the middle, immediately being cut down by Raam’s gun, or torn to shreds by the kryll surrounding Raam. No matter how many times I tried to tell him to regroup or cease fire, he would just run up and commit suicide. Idiot.